Dutch Economy Amongst Worse in Europe

With an economy that is shrinking even more than expected, the Netherlands is doing worse than 21 other countries of the European Union. Only the economies of Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal are shrinking faster than the Netherlands. The economies of 17 other countries are growing. The European Committee reports this in their spring forecasts. Insecurity in the housing market has led many consumers in the Netherlands to spend much less in recent days. Only export is strong, helping the Dutch economy to pick up although slowly. RTL.nl reports that the European Committee expects the economy to shrink by 0.8 percent, instead of the 0.6 that was predicted in February. In November 2012 the Committee thought the Dutch economy would grow by 0.3 percent. Next year a growth of 0.9 percent is expected.